Prorgamme ABC

Programme ABC, Nigeria

The Challenge

Provide free and reliable healthcare in rural clinics

Dr. Wallace Ogufere, a leading orthapaedic surgeon at Lewisham hospital in London, grew up in Oyo, Nigeria where effective healthcare is still a luxury. With his 27 years of medical experience he wanted to give something back

So, together with Oyo State’s First Lady Florence Ajimobi he founded Programme ABC (Access to Basic Care) to provide free healthcare in remote areas.

Each clinic is housed in a low cost 40′ container and serves an average of 80 patients per day from 9 to 5. Patients are registered (often for the first time) in reception with initial symptoms recorded by a receptionist. A trained nurse then sees the patient in the consulting room, accessing their records via pathway software (created by Dr. Ogufere) to quickly assess their symptoms and provide a diagnosis and medical prescription.

Medication is delivered each morning by motorbike and stored in a low power refrigerator. Every two weeks a senior consultant visits each clinic for more complicated treatments and patients are then referred to the regional hospital.

In total 12 clinics provide treatment to over 1000 people per day for free. Patient records are synchronised by 3G to a secure server and mirrored in the cloud, allowing any patients records to be accessible at any clinic.

All of this is ambitious in the West, but in Oyo State power is infrequent and sometimes unavailable for days.

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The Solution

Traditional UPS backups are designed to provide 15 minutes of back up power (just enough for a safe shutdown) and batteries only intended to be used a few times per year.

With daily power outs an issue, Aleutia developed a Deep Cycle UPS solution based on high capacity solar batteries, designed to be used day in/day out and that could also power the medical refrigerator.

This was further optimised by using a pair of low power Aleutia T1 computers (one for reception and one for the consulting room) that consumed just 12 watts of power (80% less than Dell) and has the reliability of no moving parts.

This solution ensured back up power was affordable and reduced maintenance costs that are prohibitive in remote areas where dust destroys traditional fan based PCs.